Placed-Based K-8 Charter School in Portland, OR

Supply & Fieldwork Fees

Monthly Fee Options:

One time or Bi-Annual fee payments:
(A manual payment will need to be made for each of these options.)

Why do we ask for Field Work and Supply Fees?

In the early years of the school, we determined that the processes for paying for field trips individually and obtaining bags of supplies donated by parents were terribly inefficient: they required much work for the staff and parents on a weekly/monthly basis, headaches for the office for tracking the collections, and too much inventory for certain supplies and not nearly enough for others. We did some research into how other charter/public schools were handing these problems, and we found that the trend is shifting to this model of asking the parents to contribute for these expenses either monthly or up front at the beginning of the school year. We discussed this over the course of a few board meetings, and then voted to enact the $100 per fee per child policy. The numbers we came up with were inline with – and in some cases far below – what other similar schools ask. We realize that especially for families with two or more students in the school what these fees represent, and so we offer families the option of setting up a monthly deduction via the SWCS Paypal account in lieu of a single up-front contribution to mitigate the impact which works out to about $20 per student per school month.

As our families know, SWCS runs on an extremely tight budget. The revenue we get from the state is just barely enough to cover our basic expenses; moreover, it is about half of what a non-charter PPS school is allocated on a per student basis. Family contributions are therefore essential if we are to maintain our excellent staff and also increase our student offerings without having to increase our class sizes to upwards of 30 students per class much like PPS and the surrounding districts.